White-Haired and Rosy-Cheeked

Years back—13 to be exact— I wrote this little poem. 

 

                        PEBBLE IN A POND

 

                    20 years old. Confident, cocky, sure that that boulder 

                I will heave into the mainstream

                will make a big splash in the world.

                Each decade, the stone 

and the river 

got smaller.

 

                At 60, that once-big splash a mere pebble

                in a small pond.

 

                But still it makes ripples, tiny rings 

                that circle outwards 

                and sometimes reach the shore

               of someone’s life 

                            about to be changed.

 

A reader might think it terribly arrogant or presumptuous that I think that what I do changes people’s lives. But the testimonies that have come back to me seem to indicate that it sometimes does— and hopefully for the better! Here is part of one I just received from a student at my 1-day workshop in Rio:

 

…Where's the music made from movement? Where's the playfulness? Where are the children composing their own experiences? It doesn't exist. Orff and Montessori were contemporaries and certainly shared some study, some common experience, so why not use the Orff approach in Montessori schools? Doug Goodkin proved to me without using any words that it is the best choice of methodology for my work and unknowingly gave me the tools to question the school where I work. The following week I proved by A+B that this methodology would work better and I was given carte blanche by my boss to do with my class what I thought best because he trusts my work. For that alone, I am immensely grateful to this workshop.…

 

At the end of the workshop, the smile, the master's gentle hug and his words "you are great, you should come to our San Francisco Orff Course" made me rethink all my plans for the next ten years. This training wasn't in my plans, but now it is. I want to take new courses, research more and more, delve deeper and apply myself because I really believe that the musicality absorbed is so great. The gains are much greater. His way of speaking, with delicacy and love, telling us to that we should always take care of the children, was really charming. Doug Goodkin is everything I hope to be as a teacher one day.

 

 So the pebble of that small 1-day workshop indeed made a big enough splash that the ripples reached the shore of this man’s heart. I’ll take it.

 

As for the title, in the beginning of his testimony he described me as a “white-haired, rosy-cheeked man.” Don’t think anybody has ever called me that before, but given all the other choices of describing this aging body and face, heck, I’ll take it!